In real life there are jobs for people who are stupid or lazy or whatever other negative traits you can think of. They don't pay well. But like all jobs, they need management of some sort.

If real life was WoW, the CEO of McDonalds, a corporation which effectively does raids for noobs, he'd be making $15 an hour and eventually realize it's pointless and go get a new job that actually pays for his ability. But instead he is quite well paid. His management, even of noobs, is rewarded.

Could a MMO have the equivalent? Can there be incentive to run guilds which only do the entry level raids and exist for people to get their feet wet? It has to be something more than just desire to help the community, because clearly that is not enough.

It's a nice idea, and I may even consider setting such a thing up once I get my horde warrior to 80.

Alas, the problem is such a guild would by its very nature have a largely ephemeral member list, as people are only new at raiding once. After they've got their feet wet and have gained confidence, they'll start to feel held back by doing the easier raids.

Because the member-list is ever-changing, I don't think the players would really get a feel for what it's like to raid with a team who know each other well.

Perhaps a better analogy would be a Raid School system: people sign up, and once you have 10 (or 25) people ready, you all move through the raid tiers together, perhaps starting out with something fairly simple like Obsidian Sanctum since it's quite short, and teaches people about awareness of their surroundings etc.

Once the class graduates, by completing Naxx, for instance, they might well move on to the next tier together, while the next round of members is signed up to start the cycle again.

I often thought of making such guilds. Guilds for the newbies to start which would run "old content" raids to get them ready to more endgame raiding.

This kind of idea is doomed in nowaday's badge system, since people can get the gear they "need" to raid the new content without doing the old content.

In Cataclysm, things will work in sort of the same way, so the only people interested in these kind of guilds would be people who like doing the old content for the sake of doing it, and those people are very rare to find.

It's a good idea, but like lvl 60 and lvl 70 guilds, it won't be widespread.

True, it needn't be a guild, and you're right in that people could stay in (or rather, not have to leave) the "home" guild they grew up in, just to do some raids.

I think one reason I described it as a guild was in part for the very reasons I just mentioned. If people do have to leave their "homes" in order to attend, it'd be a little like going to university/college: you're put in with a bunch of people you don't know, and at the end of it you come having made some good friends and (theoretically) having become a better player/person.

By leaving home and joining up with a bunch of others in the same boat, the theory is it'll foster some kind of team spirit, and the folks who graduate by killing the Lich King (or Deathwing) will hopefully become good friends along the way.

I dunno, I'm a daydreamer and an optimist, so maybe in reality it wouldn't work.

People aren't au fait with the idea of the raid leader being rewarded more than the raiders.

End result, I suspect, is that many of those who could do it well instead migrate to more progressed guilds, for more reward and less effort, while those who do lead said raids do it for the power trip.

Andy, I'd always imagine such a guild to be something you do "on the side" and not your main occupation. Like I suggested, something you do on Saturday evenings, like when I participate in Gevlon's Undergeared raids.

In order to ask people to leave their main guild to attend school, the schedule would have to be more "hardcore" so you (actually, your students) don't "waste" 4 weeks in a learning guild to do only 4 raids. If you asked students to join the guild, you'd prolly have to raid 3-4 times a week so that the course is a Crash-Course, and that would leave little time for your regular raiding, if you wish to have it.

There's a very successful MMO equivalent .. EVE University. New EVE Online players join and learn the basics of PvE, PvP, economics, nullsec .. and then leave to join a corporation (guild) in the "real game".

My first leveling guild had the 'go getters' the people who wanted to level and do stuff, and the people who wanted to be hand held and run through stuff. I think rewarding the GM of such a guild would be an awesome thing because they do put a lot of effort in, it would however make them 'employed' and therefore at the mercy of the people only interested in getting what they can out of that arrangment because the GM is getting a reward.

Perhaps there could be school guilds run as a profitable business. New players could join at the bottom and work their way up through Naxx and Ulduar, proving themselves along the way and learning. At the end the guild leadership could officially certify them as "not total noobs". If the school guilds seemed to have high enough standards, certification could do a lot to help reduce GS inflation as people became less afraid of other players.

I have to say that killing yogg, even if overgearing him, is a nice measure of skill. While the fight is made considerably easier with better gear (like all fights), there is still a lot there that depends on skill and not gear.

For instance, no matter how geared you are you won't get through p1 if there is a single person in the raid stepping on crap they're not supposed to.

Making might even be a decent project. Again, there still needs to be a lot of thought into it, but it's starting to look better and better.

The reward for the School could just be a tuition that attendees needed to pay for the course.

The problem would be with certification. How could one certify that a person has indeed passed the tests? Maybe have a website with all successful graduates?

At first glance you seem to be right, Gevlon. The good raiders don't need schooling and the bad ones would skip school, looking for the easier rewards.

You forget to equate, however, that reading about something is not the same as doing/having done it.

School of Raids would require homework (looking up tactics and abilities), but would provide the opportunity to put what was learned in practice, which you can't in pugs and without it you can't apply to guilds (which both usually require previous ACTUAL experience).

School of Raids would work much like IRL schools. There's nothing there that intelligent people couldn't learn on their own if they wanted to, but it would provide a structured way for people to learn, catering to the average player. (Like in schools, more advanced students would still feel it's going too slow, and less advanced ones would feel it's going way too fast, but that's life)

The advantage of attending School of Raids would be that at the end you get a diploma (even if it's just the achievements from what you did while you were there) that you can show your future employers (pug raid leaders or guild recruitment officers) to attest for your skill.

School of Raids would be the place where you send your alts when you want them to have the achievements, or where you take your first character when you first get to 80 (or 85, soonish).

I do believe there would be a use for such a guild, and it's something I would like to participate in. I hate the dullness of doing the same (only latest usually) content over and over again, and being a teacher in School of Raids would probably have me do the full length of the expansion's content over every school week.

The school isn't so much for teaching as for testing. It is so graduates can avoid some of the "link gs and achieve" because people would know they aren't garbage, so they don't need to compensate with as much gear.

Or in my case, I'd love to have a place t learn raid healing on my priest, since I'm reluctant to jump into a "5k gs one wipe and we disband" pug. Regardless of willingness to learn, some people do still need practice.

"Can there be incentive to run guilds which only do the entry level raids and exist for people to get their feet wet?"

Of course there can -- same as there are incentives for professors to teach entry-level courses. Create a list of experienced but broke raiders who can guide students through level-appropriate content. Charge the students a tuition and pay the teachers for the raid's success.

The teachers get variety, gold and influence. The students get gear, experience, achievements and networking contacts. Maybe the school itself gets a cut of the tuition and any BoE drops.